1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dialing method in a mobile telephone, and in particular, to a method for retrieving a telephone number stored in a mobile telephone by inputting part of the telephone number and dialing a retrieved telephone number.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a mobile telephone, it is inefficient for a user who frequently calls a certain party to dial the seven or higher digit telephone number of that party each time a call is placed. To solve this inefficiency, mobile telephones have been provided with a phone book function for storing frequently used telephone numbers for future use. When dialing a telephone number using the phone book function, the user presses a function key and a scroll key several times to retrieve a desired telephone number. Once the desired telephone number is retrieved, the number can be dialed automatically by means of another key entry by the user. This phone book function is useful for the purpose of dialing a telephone number that the user cannot remember correctly. However, the speed by which the number can be dialed from the start of the process is limited, since the user needs to press the scroll keys repeatedly until the desired telephone number is retrieved, even when the user already knows the number. In the worst case, the user may press the keys more times than the number of the digits in the telephone number.
In another approach, mobile telephones have been provided with a speed dial function for registering frequently used telephone numbers in association with unique speed dial keys. The user can dial the registered telephone numbers by pressing the associated speed dial keys, but needs to remember the telephone number or party associated with the respective speed dial keys. Accordingly, the user typically needs to separately note the telephone numbers or parties associated with the respective speed dial keys, which is cumbersome.
Another technique that has been attempted to facilitate dialing has been to equip the mobile phone with speech recognition means to implement a voice dialing function. Telephone numbers are registered in association with speech data input by the user for respective parties to be called. Upon reception and recognition of input speech matching stored speech data, the telephone number associated with the speech is dialed. This method, however, suffers from being susceptible to the surrounding noise, and has a relatively low dial success rate.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method which retrieves a telephone number when the user enters only a few digits of the telephone number to be dialed, and then dials the retrieved telephone number.
To achieve the above and other objects, there is provided a dialing method in a mobile phone which stores frequently used telephone numbers in a first memory of the phone and less frequently used telephone numbers in a second memory of the phone. Upon reception of input data comprising one or more digits from the phone keypad, the method searches the first memory for a stored telephone number that has a portion matching the input data. If a matching telephone number is found, it is displayed on the telephone display. If no matches are found in the first memory, a search of the second memory is performed, and if a matching telephone number is found, that number is displayed. Whenever a matching telephone number from the first or second memory is displayed, the displayed number is automatically dialed upon reception of a command from the user, e.g., upon detection of a SEND key input. If neither the first nor second memory has a telephone number with a portion matching the input numeric data, the mobile phone outputs the input numeric data to the display.